Unrequited
by aMUSEment345
Summary: One shot. Intra-and post-ep for 15X06, 'Date Night'. Reid girds himself for seeing Cat again.


_**A.N. Intra- and post-ep for 15X06, 'Date Night'. There was much I thought was out of character, and much I found preposterous, even for a fictional TV show. But I still love Reid, and so do some of his colleagues.**_

* * *

_**Unrequited**_

"Emily, no!"

"I don't see a way around it, JJ. There are two lives at risk."

Emily Prentiss understood the reaction of her agent, because she shared it herself. Cat Adams was demanding to see Spencer Reid, as a condition of allowing her accomplice to release the hostages, a father and daughter with, at first glance, no discernible connection to either Cat or the accomplice.

_How the hell does this woman keep acquiring accomplices in prison, anyway? And from death row, no less!_

Catherine Adams had been one of a cadre of serial killers working in loose association with one another when they'd first encountered her a few years ago. She'd been expert at using her considerable skills in flirtation and seduction to entice her male victims, and secure their undying love….and then she'd turned that into a 'dying love' for each of them. Meeting with her undercover, Reid had prevailed in a battle of wits, and inadvertently activated a complex amalgam of attraction and revenge.

It had been Cat who'd been behind the murder that had landed Reid in prison, and Cat who'd imposed her unique brand of psychological torture on him, upon his release. In the years intervening, Reid had fought his way back to equilibrium, and had maintained his critical role within the BAU. The unit chief side of Emily didn't want to risk the possible loss of her valued agent. And the rest of her simply couldn't abide the thought of imposing more trauma on one of her most cherished friends. She completely understood JJ's reaction, still being expressed.

"But…God, I hate this! The last time…."

JJ squelched the rest of the sentence. The full scope of what had happened 'the last time' was something that only three people in the world knew, and she wasn't about to let that change.

_The last time, I watched him nearly choke the life from this vile woman! And I know that, if he'd succeeded, it would have meant the end of him. _

She'd tried to physically restrain him then, and would have failed, if not for the words she'd managed to get into his ear. He'd been that strong, that enraged.

_And he hadn't even been out of prison for a day. Thank God he heard me, and thank God he was still himself enough to react._

She'd reminded him that Cat was pregnant, that there had been an innocent life thrown into the mix, and not just the eminently guilty life being squeezed into submission by his hands around her throat.

_Now I'm almost sorry I didn't kill her myself._

But how she have known that Cat would come after Reid again? How could any of them have known?

_Maybe Spence did. There was something going on between them beyond the back-and-forth, I could feel it. That's why Cat wanted me out of the room, after all. She knew I could still hear every word, but she wanted him to herself, alone in the same space. Maybe she thought it would help her get her talons into him. Maybe she was right._

Because the last two words JJ had heard Reid say to Cat had been, "Watch me."

_Like he knew she would. Like he knew they would still be attached, somehow. _

Reaching back through memory to the time Reid had been wrongfully imprisoned threatened to resurrect an emotional state that JJ had been trying very hard to squelch. The crisis in Reid's life had become a crisis in her own, causing her to come to terms with feelings she'd done her best to marginalize. But she'd simply been too devastated to raise her defenses high enough, and her depth of despair over his situation had forced her to acknowledge why it was there. Thus, she'd come to realize that her feelings for Reid ran much deeper than she could afford to admit, even to herself, and had, for a long time.

She'd done her best to suppress that knowledge, until another shared peril had brought it tumbling across her lips. And there it had lain, between them, creating a great divide that neither of them had known how to cross. _Whether_ to cross. The uncertainty had made things rocky this past year, between JJ and the man who'd undergone a transition from 'best friend' to 'unfulfilled love' and back again.

_Okay, maybe technically, we'll be in the 'unfulfilled love' category forever now, thanks to me and my big mouth. But at least we've recovered 'best friend'. Maybe now we're in some new weird category that's unique to us. _

Whatever it was called, Reid had her heart, and she had his, and they were moving into a space where each could be happy for the other, without being the cause of that happiness. JJ had experienced her first taste of it just recently, when Spence had been itchy to resume 'a conversation' that had been interrupted. She'd recognized the look on his face, and been briefly regretful not to have been the object of it. But she'd also managed to send him off and back into his 'conversation', with a smile and a bittersweetly full heart. Letting go was one thing in theory, another when the object of the letting go was running to another.

_I just hope you're running to happiness, Spence. _

It had been a few weeks since then, and he'd shared a little bit about Max, but not all that much. He'd told JJ how they'd met, and what she did for a living. But he hadn't shared much about her background, nor her family. At first, JJ had thought he was just being circumspect, but then she realized that he wasn't sharing those things because he didn't know them.

"You're allowed to ask her questions, Spence. It isn't considered intrusive, getting to know someone you like."

Not quite certain whether she was encouraging him to learn more for his sake, or her own. 'Best friend' status, did, after all, come with some responsibilities, one of which was forming a judgment on whether 'Max' was worthy of him. But she'd had to make do with the little he'd told her, and keep her curiosity, and her judgment, to herself.

_But I don't have any curiosity about Cat Adams, and I do have lots of judgment. She's pure evil, and I don't want her near you._

To Emily, she said, "Let me talk to him first, okay? I just…. I just want to be sure he's ready."

Her unit chief eyed JJ for a few beats. She'd long been aware that there had been omissions in the report of what had happened in that prison interrogation room a few years ago. Considering the circumstances, and considering the fact that two of her most trusted friends had been involved, she'd been willing to let it go. Now, she wondered if those omissions would come back to haunt all of them.

All she could do in the moment was to trust them.

"All right."

* * *

"Hey."

JJ knocked as she entered the office he'd borrowed to collect himself.

Reid looked up from the depth of his rumination, acknowledging her presence without speaking.

"You okay?"

He shook his head as he shrugged an unconvincing indifference.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

A small smile thanked her for it.

"I don't really have much choice, do I?"

"Well, someone else might have said 'no', but that someone wouldn't have been Spencer Reid."

_I know you can't let someone be endangered just to spare yourself some pain. Even though sometimes I wish you could._

She continued where she'd left off. "Listen, Spence, it's not like the last time."

_You're stronger. She hasn't just succeeded in ruining your life. And she doesn't have your mother. _

"She still has the upper hand. She's got hostages."

"And you've still got me. Just like the last time, just like I told you then…you may not see me, but you'll still have me. I won't let anything happen."

He'd have the whole team, but she knew that wasn't what he needed to hear. He didn't trust himself around Cat Adams, and JJ was the only one who truly understood why.

"I hate her."

"You've got plenty of company there, my friend."

"No, you don't understand. I HATE her. I hate her!"

The vehemence of his words struck her, and she paused, studying him.

_No, you don't._

"Spence…"

"I hate what she's done to me! I hate that she's killed people! She actually_ killed_ two people who were trying to help my mother! And now she's threatening to kill more, and….."

JJ interrupted him with a flash of insight. "You don't hate her. You want to hate her, but you can't. Because you feel sorry for her."

_Because empathy runs so deeply within you that it won't let you hate anyone. Even Cat Adams._

Reid's chin fell to his chest, his argument deflated.

"Her father killed her mother. Did you know that? I mean, my father left my mother, but he didn't kill her. Not physically, anyway."

"And that makes her pathetic, Spence. But it doesn't give her the right to do what she did to all of those people, and it doesn't give her the right to keep harassing you."

Reid rubbed his frustration into his eyes.

"It's like she wants something from me, and I don't know what it is!"

"She wants_ you_, Spence. She's attracted to you."

"But _why_?"

JJ threw him a look. "You're asking _me _that?"

He blushed. "No, but it's not the same. Cat and I barely know each other, and all of it's been antagonistic."

JJ was quiet for a long minute, thinking. Remembering something that had bothered her, at the time.

"You know, you were playing her, that first time, in the restaurant. But you also opened yourself up to her. You told her something you hadn't told any of the rest of us."

He'd told Cat about his mother, and her newly diagnosed dementia. Something he hadn't mentioned to anyone on the team, including his best friend. Reid's genius mind took only a nanosecond to recall the episode, and the 'reason' he'd justified to himself, after a long night of self-analysis.

"She was supposed to see me as vulnerable, so I made myself vulnerable."

JJ wasn't having it. "You didn't have to do that with the truth. There was a reason you told her the truth that night, Spence." _And a reason you let her see that you really did think you'd lost yourself in prison._ "What is it?"

Briefly flashing on the time, nearly a year ago, when _she_ had told a truth she hadn't needed to tell, under duress.

She was worried about him. He _had_ let himself be vulnerable with Cat, twice now. He'd prevailed the first time. But the second….

_You walked out of that prison, and left her behind, but she'd already claimed a piece of you that night. Please, please, please, don't give her any more. _

Reid struggled with her question, and the resonance of it.

_She's right. I'm different with Cat._

"Spence…"

He began to pace, his body seeking to expel some of the emotional turmoil within.

"I don't know. I don't…." Stopping abruptly.

With his back to her, JJ couldn't see whether he'd reached a conclusion of triumph or tragedy. But the fact that he remained facing away when he uttered his next words told her all she needed to know.

"She sees me. She sees a side of me that most people don't see. A part that's real."

Taking ownership of it, much to JJ's consternation.

"Spence, she sees only what she wants to see."

That turned him around. "Don't we all? I mean, do _you_ really see me as I am? _All _of me? Or do you only see me as you want to?"

"I think I'm pretty well aware of who you are, as much as you let anyone know you, Spence. I'm not a fool, and I know you're not perfect. I was there, remember?"

As they were both still painfully aware.

"All right, maybe that's not fair. Maybe what I mean is that Cat _accepts_ that part of me. It's not something she knows about, and tries to overlook."

He had her there. But only for a moment.

"Spence, maybe I'm totally off base here, but… Cat doesn't just _know_ the dark side of Spencer Reid. She_ celebrates_ it. And there's absolutely no way you'll ever convince me that you celebrate it, too."

"I don't. But I can't help but know that it's there. It's in all of us, JJ. Cat just...she just doesn't have enough good in her to battle it. That's not really her fault."

"Her choices are hers, Spence."

"But what if she doesn't really have choices? Both Aquinas and Augustine said the same thing about evil, you know." Unable to refrain from sharing his insight with her, despite the gravity of the situation, and the immediacy of the threat. "They said that evil can't exist without good, because evil is a privation of good. A scarcity. Cat is who she is because she's never had enough good in her life."

JJ's eyes narrowed as she tried to project where his thoughts were leading. "Are you trying to say that you think you can inject some good into Cat's life? Because, Spence..."

"No, I'm not. I can't transfer my life experience to hers. I can't change the things that she's done, or the twistedness that leads her to do them. I guess I just think she doesn't have to be so alone in it."

"You really do feel sorry for her, don't you?"

He shrugged. "I guess I do. But I also know that she can't be allowed to do what she's doing right now. I have to do whatever it takes to stop her from hurting other people, even if I empathize with how she got to be who she is. If that means letting her connect with who she thinks I am, then so be it."

"Well, that's it then, isn't it? You let Cat see into you, you let her find what she's looking for, because it hooks her. And then you reel her in. But you don't get sucked into it yourself. You remember who you are, in here."

Drawing close enough to pat him on the chest, laying her hand over his heart.

"Promise me you'll remember that, okay? I don't care if you think I have rose-colored glasses where you're concerned. I just want you to come back from this, still strong."

His hand caught hers and squeezed it.

"I will. It's different now, from before."

_I've got direction now. I've got someone who loves me, right here, and someone new, whom I just might be learning to love._

JJ gave him a small smile of encouragement.

"Then let's get to it. And remember, just like before, I'll be right outside the door."

* * *

Hours later, heading back to the BAU, Reid felt like he'd been pummeled by a cyclone, taking hits from all directions, beginning with Cat. She had insisted on a perverted 'date', which he'd almost accidentally enjoyed, despite his promise to JJ.

_Maybe I'm just flattered at her interest. Or maybe I can't stop feeling sorry for her. Or maybe…_

The last 'maybe' always tripped him up, as though his cognitive process refused to find the vocabulary to describe his relationship with Cat Adams. But it couldn't seem to keep him from realizing the fact of it.

_We do have a relationship. Maybe it's twisted and unhealthy, but it's there._

As he'd parted from her at the entrance to the prison, Reid had been acutely aware of that fact. And he'd known it wouldn't be the last time he would see her. If not before, he was certain she would request he be present at her execution.

_Not just because I taunted her with it. _

As he had, when he'd interrogated her. It had been a piece of strategy, to throw her off her game, even if it had taken a toll on his soul to say it.

_She'll want me there, because she has no one else. _

And he would go, for the same reason.

Catherine Adams would take a piece of Spencer Reid with her, when she died. The part he'd warned JJ about, the part he least liked to visit. To Cat's traumatized psyche, taking a piece of him might seem a fitting act of revenge.

But for Spencer Reid, it would be liberation.

* * *

His return from dropping Cat at the prison had been met with a series of revelations from his teammates and his new girlfriend. They'd told him about how they'd learned that the hostages taken had belonged to Max, in the form of her father and sister. That, while he had been entertaining Cat, the rest had deduced the plot, and engaged Max into working with them to trick Cat into giving away the location of her accomplice. He hadn't needed to be told about Max's performance in the process. He'd seen it first hand, and been rattled by the things she'd said. Afterward, he'd been only slightly less rattled to find out that she'd been so good at spinning the untruth.

Now, with most of the BAU emptied out, Reid was upstairs with Emily, leaving JJ alone with the woman who had kindled a spark in her best friend.

"So….you're Max. Spence has been telling me about you."

"And you're the famous, and quotable, 'JJ'."

The blonde profiler wasn't quite sure how to take that. "He quotes me?"

_I thought he only quoted philosophers._

"When he's not quoting someone from a few centuries ago, yes. The day we met, pretty much everything was 'JJ says this' and 'JJ says that'."

"Wow. I had no idea he was listening to me so closely. Sorry for being an intrusion."

Max smiled. "No worries. I pretty much agree with every thing he says you say."

Catching JJ's gaze, with a smile in her eyes, and happy to have it returned in kind.

"Well, I'm sorry anyway. He seems to really like you, and you seem to make him happy."

Having long since discerned the role of 'quotable JJ' in Reid's life, Max's next question was voiced in earnest.

"Do you really think so? Because I kind of like him, too. He's nice, and polite, and even…." Searching for the word.

"Chivalrous?"

"Exactly! Yes. And, especially after today, I can see that he's also complex, and intriguing…."

As she listened to the tone of excited anticipation from the new woman in Reid's life, JJ hoped the sheen in her eyes wasn't visible from the outside.

"He's all of those things. But, Max? He's also vulnerable. So, please, just don't…."

"I won't." Turning away, and then turning back, once again. "I promise."


End file.
